[WikiEN-l] Want to publish English version of Wikipedia on DVD and need help/advice

[Justin Cormack]

On 5 Jan 2006, at 18:55, Richard Seltzer wrote:

> I publish books (mainly public domain) on CD and DVD. You can see  
> my offerings at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
>
> I would like to publish a DVD that includes the full text of  
> Wikipedia, peferably as a set of interlinked html pages (easy for a  
> novice to use, and with no need for a database).  The DVD would  
> also include dozens of other reference books.
>
> I understand (thanks to Lars Aronsson) that Directmedia Publishing  
> in Berlin (www.directmedia.de) put the German Wikipedia on DVD  
> (ISBN 3-86640-001-2).  It sells for $10 on
> www.amazon.de, and $1 of that goes to the German branch of the  
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> I would like to do something similar for the English version. I  
> would sell it for $12 since it includes other works as well and  
> also since I provide free shipping inside the US. I could also  
> contribute $1 for each DVD sold to the Wikimedia Foundation (or  
> whatever branch of that is appropriate). In addition, I would like  
> to update the DVD about once a month.
>
> I downloaded 20051105_pages_articles.xml.bz2 823 Mbytes I  
> uncompressed that file (using ZipZag) to 20051105_pages_artcles.xml  
> 3.5 Gigabytes
>
> But what can I/should I do next?
>
> The xml file is too big to open in my IE browser (and too big for  
> any customer to open either). I was hoping to get a set of inter- 
> linked files (similar to the way downloads of the CIA World  
> Factbook are presented), so anyone could open a home page and  
> navigate to the the rest.
>
> Is there anything I can do (with my Windows PC) to convert the  
> downloadable files to this format? Or could anyone out there in the  
> Wikipedia community help me?

You need to install the mediawiki software, import the xml into the  
database and then write a script to
generate the html pages. You probably want to find a tame hacker to  
help set it up for the first time
(you will need some customisation, set up a look and feel etc; also  
if you are not going to have the
pictures you may want to strip out the captions, and you need to work  
out what to do with red links etc).

Suggest you mail the technical list to find someone who can do the  
detailed work. Its not a huge amount
although getting it right may take a while as there is a lot to check.

Best wishes

Justinc